About Us

NET is your gateway to the lands of the Bible: the cultural roots, the religious heritage, the historical pathways.
Visiting the lands of the Bible is not like touring anywhere else. It is a kind of homecoming, because we all grew up hearing about these places, and the events became part of our lives. For three generations NET has been helping groups of tourists, pilgrims and students accomplish this journey.NET is a family business. Emil Abu Dayyeh, its founder, began guiding scholars and archaeologists during the period of the British Mandate. In 1964, together with his wife Wedad (Um Hani), he established the Near East Tourist Agency (NET) in Jerusalem. Although we have grown to be one of the largest tour operators in Israel and the Middle East, the crucial element of personal contact remains our hallmark. With headquarters in the Holy Land, we also have branches in Jordan, Italy, Greece, and Turkey, as well as representative offices in Egypt and Syria .

We attribute the growth of the company to the care we take in selecting guides, the personal attention we give each group, and our very competitive pricing.

Service.

Our basic principle is this: The tour is yours! Together with an agency in your country, we shall help you design and implement the kind of experience you want. Some choose to stress the cultural and historical aspects of these lands. Others seek to deepen their faith, following in the footsteps of Jesus, the first apostles and the earliest Christians. In addition to visiting the archaeological sites, we make a special point of exploring the landscape, showing how it connects to the Biblical events. (The Holy Land is “the fifth gospel,” wrote Cyril of Jerusalem more than 1600 years ago.) In all the Bible Lands we seek contact with the roots of Christianity: Jewish, Greek and Roman.

The guide.

The qualities we seek in a guide are knowledge, language skills, patience, and above all, heart. These lands are special, so the persons who lead you through them must be responsive, both to their deeper meanings and to your purpose in being here. Our guides can present the cultural background or the Biblical text in a living connection to the sites.

The bus and its driver.

In the Holy Land and Greece, we have our own bus companies, featuring modern air-conditioned NET coaches. The drivers are chosen for their skill, patience, and professionalism.

During NET’s three generations, operating tours has been a vocation in the deeper sense. You can get a first impression of us by exploring this website. Just as it differs from other tourist websites, so NET differs from other tourist agencies.